Was one of the longest-running Chinese restaurants in the U.S.
By Jordan Hansen DAILY MONTANAN
BUTTE – One of the longest continually-operated Chinese restaurants in the nation has closed, with Pekin Noodle Parlor, a Butte institution, announcing this week it was closing its doors permanently.
The restaurant has been in operation since 1911 and has been noted as the country’s oldest family-owned Chinese restaurant. A “closed” sign hung on the door on Friday.
“There is still a future for the Pekin, but it’s not expecting customers to dine out and enjoy each others’ company over hot tea and a warm bowl of noodles, tipping your server, and supporting mom/pop restaurants that made up this great nation,” owner Jerry Tam wrote in a message.
Tam added that negative attitudes toward dining out impacted the business. Americans have veered toward takeout over dining in, according to a survey by U.S. Foods.
The shift toward takeout became difficult to sustain the restaurant operations, Tam said.
“Chinese takeout was part of our equation, but online food delivery was not the answer,” Tam wrote. “The negative attitudes of dining out overwhelmed our staff.”
Pekin Noodle Parlor was well-known, both in Montana and around the country. Several people on Friday morning came and saw the closure for themselves, with one woman expressing shock it was closed. Former U.S. Senator Max Baucus even got Pekin into the Congressional record, recognizing it on June 23, 2011.
“For generations, the parlor has been a centerpiece of Chinatown and an evolving Butte community,” Baucus said then.
The Congressional record states that miners, late night crowds and prominent citizens all frequented the restaurant, which added it had always catered to non-Chinese clientele, “many of whom in the early days were curious to get a glimpse of Chinatown.” It added that Yatcamein — wet noodles — and chop suey were favorites.
The Tam families’ roots are incredibly deep in the American West, the record went on to state. Family members first came in the late 1860s and others followed in the years after, helping to open the Quong Fong Laundry, which was in operation into the 1950s.
According to Pekin’s website, Hum Yow and Tam Kwong Yee opened the parlor on the second floor of the Main Street Building in Butte in 1911. Ding Kuen Tam, grandson of Tam Kwong Yee, left China and came to the United States in 1947. He became known as “Danny Wong” and purchased the business from his great-uncle, Hum Yow. Wong ran the business for more than six decades with his wife, Sharon Chu.
Wong died in 2020, and Butte created “Danny Wong Day” in 2021 to commemorate his work. The restaurant received the “America’s Classics” award from the James Beard Foundation in 2023.
Jerry Tam, who is Wong’s son, said his father never wanted the restaurant life for his family.
“My father gave me the Pekin to make a decision he could not make for himself or have his beloved daughters do . . . someday having to close the restaurant,” Tam wrote. “He knew how difficult this line of work was and how people truly behaved.”
